Today -100: July 27, 1924: Of diseased minds, reparations, and hylans

Clarence Darrow tells the Leopold n’ Loeb court that he won’t be arguing legal insanity but that “the boys” – he’s gonna be using that term repeatedly if unsubtly throughout the trial – “have diseased minds and... were not responsible for their acts.”

The US threatens to break off diplomatic relations with Persia unless it arrests those who killed Vice Consul Robert Imbrie and his plus-one, punishes cops and soldiers who were present and failed to intervene (or participated), pay for the warship sent to bring Imbrie’s body home, and attend the putting-the-corpse-on-the-warship ceremony.

NYC Mayor John Hylan says he might run for governor, if progressives want him to. It’s unclear if that means he’d run in the Democratic convention in September or would join La Follette’s Progressives. He’s in California, meeting with William Randolph Hearst, who does not get on with Al Smith or Tammany Hall and may have urged this move on Hylan.

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Today -100: July 26, 1924: Of refugees and kidnappppings

Greece tells 50,000 Armenian refugees that they need to go... somewhere. Somewhere else. The League of Nations is asking Russia to take them.

In the Leopold n’ Loeb trial, State’s Attorney Robert Crowe introduces into evidence a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, purely because its title is spelled with that double P, just like in the ransom notes (“kidnaped” being more common at the time). The judge allows it. It’s going to be that kind of trial.

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Today -100: July 25, 1924: Not to either demagogue or crackpot

William Randolph Hearst publishes a signed letter in his newspapers calling for the Dems to replace Al Smith as their nominee for NY governor in November (also something about water power). Smith replies that he never reads any of Hearst’s papers, which he has banned from state offices, but says when the Democratic Party “needs advice it will go to Democrats for it, and not to either demagogue or crackpot.” In a very NYT move, the article helpfully defines “crackpot” for its readers, noting the word is not in the dictionary. The state Democratic Convention will be held in September and it’s not even clear yet whether Smith will run for re-election. DemoCon is expected to pass a strong anti-Klan plank.

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Today -100: July 24, 1924: We must be intelligent even in our intransigence

Clarence Darrow objects to the prosecution in the Leopold & Loeb trial introducing every detail of the murder of Bobby Franks, given that they are pleading guilty. He says the prosecutor’s address is “utterly incompetent [meaning irrelevant] and meant only to appeal to the passions of men.”

Mussolini pushes “reforms” through the Grand Council of the Fascismo, including the expulsion of “undesirables,” “good-for-nothings,” and “all those who love violence for violence’s sake,” as he refers to them. But who would that leave? He wants greater discipline in the party: “We must be intelligent even in our intransigence, for the Fascistization of Italy must surely come, but it must come gradually and cannot be forced.”

At the Olympics in Paris, Italian fencer Oreste Puliti is banned after trying to provoke a duel with the Hungarian fencing judge.

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Today -100: July 23, 1924: Of Ford v. the demon liquor, sieges, and thwarted lynchings

Henry Ford has notices posted in his plants that he will fire any employee with liquor on his breath or who keeps liquor in their home.

The Brazilian army is still bombarding São Paulo after more than a week.

Illinois Gov. Len Small sends the state militia to Mounds City to stop a lynching of two black prisoners held in the jail for killing a, I’m just gonna guess here, white woman.

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Today -100: July 22, 1924: Of killers, serial killers, killer mobs, and Russian divorces

Leopold n’ Loeb plead guilty to killing Bobby Franks, on the theory that they’d be better off having their fates determined by a judge who might be convinced by evidence of insanity than by one of those notoriously blood-thirsty Chicago juries. Their lawyer Clarence Darrow says no one thinks they should be released but rather they should be permanently isolated from society. He’ll now be in the tricky position of having to convince a judge not to execute them because of insanity after they have pleaded guilty, which insane people aren’t allowed to do.

Hanover serial killer Fritz Haarmann is charged with 17 murders. Haarmann is called “strangely psychotic” by government criminologist Dr. (ahem) Kopp. In addition to “M,” which was partly inspired by Haarmann, there’s a movie, Der Totmacher, that consists solely of the psychiatric interrogations, although not by Dr. (ahem) Kopp. It’s... intense (By sheer coincidence I just watched that movie about Haarmann, the Vampire of Hanover, right after an episode of the Spanish sci-fi show The Ministry of Time which was about a Spanish serial killer called the Vampire of Barcelona).

Persia apologizes for the killing by a Tehran mob of US vice consul Robert Imbrie, but it seems that police and soldiers were part of that mob, as shown by a sabre cut on his head.

Soviet Russia introduces the 5-minute, $1.50 divorce (if uncontested). Grounds for divorce include desertion, religious superstition, and differing political views. No one can get divorced and remarried more than 3 times a year, so pace yourself, guys.

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Today -100: July 21, 1924: They will plan to whoop things up

German republicans (but predominantly Social Democrats) form The Reichsbanner, an organization with a paramilitary wing to fight monarchism.

This will be the first election in the US in which radio plays a significant part, and there are many theories about how that will work. La Follette, for example, says it will stop reactionary newspapers lying about speeches radio listeners will have heard themselves. The NYT thinks radio won’t be that important because that’s not what people want from the radio and they’ll just switch off when speeches by people from parties other than own come on. Public meetings will still be the preferred venue because they provide the collective fervor of an audience, the spectacle of banners and bands, etc: “The political generals do not want the voters to keep cool and be too critical. They will plan to whoop things up, and it cannot be done to any great extent by broadcasting speeches.”

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Today -100: July 20, 1924: But not a Wall Street Democrat

The Allies’ conference on the Dawes Plan agrees to let France retain its right of independent action, for example to keep invading the Ruhr or wherever it wants to do to Germany whenever it wants.

The Catholic Church in France will refuse sacraments to women showing cleavage. Or elbows.

H. Grindell Matthews says he’s going blind due to his experiments with his Diabolical Ray, which is not a euphemism and that’s not what he calls his penis and please stop calling it a death ray, he says (well, he says some of that). He seems hurt by all the criticism of his fraud, but he can’t spill the details by applying for a patent. He promises that some day he’ll release the information that will convince electrical experts that he has “discovered a new force.” He says it could stun entire armies or cities. Gosh.

Burton Wheeler agrees to be La Follette’s running mate, saying “I am a Democrat, but not a Wall Street Democrat.”

The Bavarian state legislature hears a motion to prevent Jews holding government posts, buying land, teaching high school, or changing their names to disguise their Jewishness. It would expel any Jews who moved to Bavaria since 1914 and confiscate their property.

Australia tells Britain that it doesn’t want its citizens being given British knighthoods & suchlike. Canada did this 5 years ago.

A black man accused of attempting to assault a white woman is lynched in Scooba, Mississippi.

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Today -100: July 19, 1924: Purely ephemeral

The US vice consul in Tehran, Major Robert Imbrie, is beaten to death by a mob enraged at his taking photos of a sacred well where a miracle had supposedly taken place (a blind man’s sight restored) and women are present. Or maybe the Persians thought he was Bahai. Or that he’d poisoned the well. Or the mob was provoked by the government so they would kill a foreigner and give it an excuse to crack down. Or something. Imbrie’s diplomatic career included arriving in Russia just in time for the Bolshevik revolution, fleeing a death sentence the next year, and having a price put on his head in Turkey.

The Progressives name Democratic Sen. Burton K. Wheeler of Montana as Fightin’ Bob La Follette’s running mate, although Wheeler hasn’t said whether he’ll accept. Since Wheeler is mostly known for running the Teapot Dome investigation, it’s clear the campaign intends to run on the issue of Republican corruption.

William Butler, chair of the Republican National Committee, says Teapot Dome “is not much of an issue. It is purely ephemeral.”

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Today -100: July 18, 1924: But she does it unwittingly

Pres. Coolidge will not go on the stump, but will campaign entirely over the radio.

The British House of Lords discusses admitting women peeresses. Lord Banbury of Southam reminds the Lords: “You must remember that men and women are different, and you cannot prevent a woman in the House of Commons exercising the privilege of her sex which she has been accustomed to exercise. You cannot treat her as an equal. I do not for a moment say that she, by malice prepense, exercises that fascination which a woman exercises over man, but she does it unwittingly.” Women won’t be allowed to exercise that fascination in the Lords until 1958.

Pope Pius will offer a medal to whichever Catholic Women’s Diocesan Club comes up with the best modest fashion for women’s clothing.

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Today -100: July 17, 1924: De Valera & Einstein, together again

Éamon de Valera is out of prison. He spent the last year studying math, especially Einsteinian theory.

Klan-backed Judson Transue is elected mayor of Flint, Michigan.

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Today -100: July 16, 1924: Exhibit A

The Irish Free State will free Éamon de Valera and other political prisoners.

The US embassy in Brazil overrules its consul in Santo’s call for warships to be sent. The Brazilian government is arresting army officers it thinks might be sympathetic to the rebellion.

At the murder trial in Mays Landing, New Jersey, of Pearl Willard and her boarder, former NYPD cop John Gilles, for the killing of her 5-month-old daughter, the actual for-fuck’s-sake corpse is brought into the courtroom for the jury and everybody to see, ostensibly for identification purposes since Mrs Willard denies that was her child. No one can remember this happening before.

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Today -100: July 15, 1924: Very normal

Very Normal Headline of the Day -100:  

 

Fritz Haarmann, the serial killer known as the Butcher of Hanover, had an accomplice (lover, I think) in the used-clothing business, Hans Grans, which is a fun name, I guess. Grans was in it for the used clothes (best not to think about Haarmann being a literal butcher, who illicitly sold mystery ground “beef”).

NY General Sessions Judge George Washington Olvany is the new head of Tammany Hall.

The Brazilian army is shelling São Paulo, which is still occupied by rebel troops.

H.L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Evening Sun: “There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell—and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.”

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Today -100: July 14, 1924: How many statues were ever erected in the US for black World War I soldiers?

France opens a monument in Rheims to its black colonial (mostly Senegalese) troops.

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Today -100: July 13, 1924: Honorable & reasonable

Egyptian Premier Saad Zaghloul is wounded in an assassination attempt. The would-be-assassin, a student, says Zaghloul had called the British Parliament honorable and reasonable.

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Today -100: July 12, 1924: Mr. Gracious

William Gibbs McAdoo is backed into a corner and finally endorses John W. Davis, at Will Rogers’ Follies of all places. He’s in the audience and Rogers points him out, so he’s forced to stand up and say “now that the convention is over we must all get together and make sure that we elect a Democrat.” Still can’t bring himself to utter Davis’s name. The next day he does meet Davis, but he won’t say what they talked about or whether he’ll support the Davis-Bryan ticket; he says he’ll answer that before he sails for Europe tomorrow – if he has time.

Fritz Haarmann, the Hanover serial killer, says he deserves to be executed. He can’t remember the names of all his victims: “You see, they came so fast that I really did not have a good chance to get well acquainted with them” before chopping them to bits and dumping the bits into the river.

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Today -100: July 11, 1924: Maybe it’s just the friends you meet along the way

John W. Davis says he first met his running mate, Gov. Charles Bryan, at this convention, and hasn’t spoken to him since the nomination.

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Today -100: July 10, 1924: Future trivia quiz answer nominated for president!

On the 103rd ballot, the Democrat National Convention selects former ambassador to Britain John W. Davis as its presidential candidate after William Gibbs McAdoo and Gov. Alfred E. Smith withdraw.

Davis, from West Virginia, is the first presidential candidate from the South since the Civil War. He is Presbyterian. His campaign supposedly cost just $5,000.

Davis is informed of his nomination by his wife, who heard it on the radio while he was out having a smoke.

The withdrawal of Smith & McAdoo should have been an emotional high point, the NYT says, but “McAdoo withdrew so reluctantly and ambiguously and hedged his renunciation with so many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘ands’ that the emotional value of that turning point was dissipated.”

Smith volunteers to campaign for Davis, and McAdoo... is going to Europe on vacation for two months. He sends a one-sentence telegram to Davis and... that’s it. He refuses to talk to reporters. Smith is just happy that he was able to block McAdoo.

Incidentally, everyone in the Convention seems to love Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Smith’s campaign manager.

The Democratic National Convention chooses as Davis’s running mate Gov. Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska (the brother of William Jennings Bryan, who’s been fighting the Davis candidacy tooth and nail) with little fuss and only one ballot at 2:30 in the morning, after a brief boom for Sen. Thomas Walsh (Montana), who led the Teapot Dome investigation. Walsh declined to accept what he basically called a demotion.

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Today -100: July 9, 1924: 88 to 100

Al Smith & William Gibbs McAdoo meet secretly at the Ritz-Carlton. Smith hectors his rival to withdraw, at least we assume that since neither man will reveal what they said to each other.

During the Convention’s evening session, Al Smith’s campaign manager Franklin Delano Roosevelt announces that Smith will drop out if McAdoo does. Hours later, McAdoo releases his delegates, but that is not quite the same as withdrawing. In the meantime, the McAdooites make an intensive effort to regain the lead, which they do in the 94th ballot, helped by Sen. Samuel Ralston withdrawing from the race, er, again. Many of the remaining 15 candidates are jockeying to become the compromise candidate should Smith & McAdoo both withdraw. Ralston had been a favorite comp-can.

In the 100th ballot, the last of the day, McAdoo, whose support has been bouncing up and down all day, drops to 190 (he started the day at 315 and went as high as 421), putting him at 3rd place behind John W. Davis at 203, with Smith at 351½.

After that ballot, William Jennings Bryan attempts to speak, but is jeered down.

Incidentally, FDR “was escorted to the rostrum”. That story doesn’t mention why he might need assistance. I was pondering how the NYT keeps alluding unnecessarily to his disability like that, in a way which will pass right over the heads of readers who don’t know about it, before I saw another story that does mention his crutches.

The Socialist Party condemns –  by name – the Ku Klux Klan and “every other effort to divide the workers on racial or religious lines, and to effect political purposes by secret or terroristic methods.”

Calvin Coolidge’s father heard of the death of his grandson on the radio (he has a radio but not a phone).

Germans are super-pissed that Friedrich “Fritz” Haarmann, the serial killer known as the Butcher of Hanover, among other sobriquets, wasn’t caught long ago. And he certainly should have been. So far he’s confessed to butchering 14 boys. There were more.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 8, 1924: 78 to 87

Calvin Coolidge Jr. dies. From a blister. Seven doctors were working on him, one of whom was knocked unconscious for a bit after an oxygen tank exploded.

At the Democratic National Convention, there’s finally some movement. Over the day’s 10 ballots, McAdoo’s support drops from 511 to 333½, losing Nevada, Missouri, Iowa and Kansas, while Al Smith, whose support remains steadily in the 360s, surpasses McAdoo for the first time on the 86th ballot and ends the day at 361½. John W. Davis starts the day at 73½ and ends at 66½. I think some of the drop in McAdoo votes can be attributed to resentment of his resistance to any proposal to break the stalemate. Delegates just want to go home.

By the way, James Cox and  Sen. Samuel Ralston, who withdrew 3 days ago, are back in the race.

The Socialist Party throws its weight behind Robert La Follette and won’t run its own candidate.

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